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UNITE! Info #160en: 1/2 Revolutionary leaders' errors
[Posted: 19.01.02]
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1. A DISCUSSION TAKING PLACE ON SOME NEWSGROUPS
Today the ongoing putrefaction of the entire international
social system of capitalism and imperialism and the worse and
worse crimes of that system's rulers against the people in the
world is putting a number of questions on the order of the day:
How can this present international "order" be overthrown? Is
it possible basically to get rid of it? How did those earlier
societies, in the Soviet Union and in China above all, which
were said to be quite different from that, to be socialist so-
cieties, actually function? Did they bring some experience
which is valuable for people today, concerning the possibili-
ties for the future, or not? And in connection with this, what
was done correctly by some of those societies' leaders and
what incorrectly - as seen from the standpoint that it's the
common interests of the vast majority of all people on earth
that must be furthered?
On this last, there has recently been a discussion on some
Internet newsgroups, 'alt.activism', alt.politics.socialism',
'alt.politics.radical-left', alt.politics.socialism.trotsky'
and 'alt.politics.socialism.mao'.
Of course, the actions of various leaders (whether revolutio-
nary ones or not) are very much those of those different
classes, strata or groups in society whose interests they
represent (consistently or perhaps less so - a person's
standpoint also may change with time). Single individuals
cannot make all that much of a difference all by themselves.
Some political leaders in recent history have had such impor-
tance anyway, that certain lines of action still today are
being identified very much with their respective names.
This Info is intended as a longer reply in the abovementioned
discussion, which mainly has been on the role and the actions
of Josef Stalin, General Secretary of the Communist Party of
the Soviet Union from 1924 to his death in 1953.
2. REPLY TO A TROTSKY ADHERENT
In article <stephend15-3E0786.20470118012002@news.
mindspring.com>, [EMAIL PROTECTED] says, subject
'Proyect's Perpetual Whining & "elementary" ally HW's'...
>So, tell me this. WHY did the great revolutionary Stalin
>form an unprincipled alliance (and I refer here not to a
>treaty, but to a whole international line which declared
>that in the capitalist countries the Nazis were not worse
>than anyone else, in order to further the aims of his al-
>liance with Hitler? As you point out, this included imper-
>missible secret diplomacy (so as to hide the fact that the
>line of the Communist Parties was to be subordinated to
>that alliance).
>
>Yet, Stalin had accused the entire leadership of the Bol-
>shevik party with being in league with the Nazis.
>
>Do tell us how this "revolutionary" could have fallen so
>low as to abandon socialist internationalism, while still
>having (in your view) genuine revolutionary credentials.
>What happened? Do you have an analysis, or just checkered
>criticisms?
>
>srd
I shall reply to this, Stephen Diamond, by 1) first repeating
that criticism of mine of that alliance which I wrote in re-
ply to Louis N. Proyect, likewise a Trotsky adherent, then
2) saying what I think were the approximate reasons why pro-
letarian internationalism, in fact, *was* abandoned *at least
in part* by the leadership of the Soviet Union in 1939 and
also earlier and later, and 3) last in this posting bringing
some lines from a relatively recently published document
(genuine-looking to me) from 1956 with some comments by Mao
Zedong on Stalin and also on some principles concerning re-
volutionary leaders' errors in general.
3. A COMMENT ON THE 1939 MOLOTOV-RIBBENTROP PACT
AND ALSO ON THE STANDPOINT OF TROTSKY (AGAIN)
In reply to Louis N Proyect earlier today (subject "Proyect's
Perpetual Whining" - a thread initiated by Hunter Watson), I
wrote:
[QUOTE:]
In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
[EMAIL PROTECTED] says...
>>But as I've written before, it's funny to see *a Trotsky ad-
>>herent*, and a supposedly "principled" one too, "criticize"
>>that alliance of Stalin's in 1939, since at the time, Trot-
>>sky said absolutely nothing against it but on the contrary
>>wrote it was a very good idea. And its main character (which
>>did contain some contradictory elements) could be seen
>>rather clearly even then, even without knowledge of that
>>secret protocol.
>>
>>Rolf M.
>
>There's actually nothing about the Stalin-Hitler pact in
>itself that is unprincipled. When you really get down to it,
>making a non-aggression pact with Nazi Germany is not that
>much different from making one with the blood-stained British
>Empire.
That pact of course had some different and contrasting elements
in it. One element was, to prevent a possible joint Nazi-
British-French attack on the Soviet Union and to gain time. But
one was too, as you in part are confirming below, to team up
with Hitler fascism for certain national-chauvinist interests.
If that pact had not come about, the Hitler fascists, rather
clearly, would have cooked in their own stew. Suppose they
had attacked Poland anyway. Britain and France would have been
forced to take some stand against this, after their earlier
guarantees to Poland - forced by the people in part, no doubt,
to give those, after that stinking Munich deal. And it's true
that the Polish bourgeois government had refused to let Soviet
troops in for defence. But after a while, if Nazi troops had
advanced into Poland, that government would have been under
sufficient pressure to allow this anyway.
All in all, that pact was a bad thing, I hold, even as seen
without its secret protocol.
And that secret protocol *was* a completely impermissible,
unprincipled thing. With it, the (still socialist, despite
everything) Soviet Union carved up zones of influence together
with the Nazi fascists, partitioned Poland, to begin with,
and also very clearly prepared for actions by no means sup-
ported by the people against the three Baltic states and for
the later war against Finland (the one of 1939-1940).
[NOTE added in this Info: Some documents on this, which look
genuine to me, can be found at the website of the (openly-
bourgeois) Avalon History Project. - RM]
With this secret protocol, that pact *was*, even in the main,
a *social-imperialist* pact on the part of the Soviet Union.
And yes, far away in Yenan, Mao Zedong defended it at the
time. He was wrong to do so too.
After WW II, Stalin made - besides some blatantly national-
chauvinist statements - also one in which he was right, and
with which he at least indirecly corrected many things said
by his government in 1939-1940: He said in a speech in Mos-
cow in 1946 (reproduced in a selection of his works in Ger-
man) that the war against the Hitler fascists had been *a
war of liberation* even *before* the Soviet Union itself was
attacked, on 22 June 1941 (when that pact was still "in
force").
>What is unprincipled is instructing Communist Parties to cease
>anti-fascist agitation.
Yes. And this *was* done, by the 3rd International, in prac-
tice very much under the control of the Soviet party - Stalin.
Needs to be criticized too, by the Marxist-Leninists.
>Furthermore, Stalin had all sorts of inexplicable faith in
>Hitler's willingness to stick to this pact.
Also true, as far as I've been able to see. Really "untypi-
cal" of Stalin though, since whatever his faults, which were
not small, he was usually by no means naive. But many things
do point to a hope of his of utilizing that Nazi Germany,
whose relative *weakness* he clearly saw, as a kind of "useful
pawn" against those much more solid "Western" imperialist
powers, and thus an attempt to get into a longer-term alliance
with it. No good plan for *the revolution*, although the Japa-
nese militarists were disfavoured by it and thus the Chinese
communists in part favoured by it; it was a plan more "suitab-
le" for those national-chauvinist interests which were so
clearly visible in that secret protocol too.
My guess is that Stalin underestimated the Hitler fascists'
stupidity, calculating that they "would understand" they
*could not possibly* conquer or break down that vast and now
also modernized Soviet Union, whose people also supported
their government (despite certain bad things done by it too).
>This is the only possible explanation for his decision to
>purge the officer corps of the Red Army, which left the
>Soviet Union highly vulnerable to invasion.
>
>Louis Proyect
>Marxism list: http://www.marxmail.org
Not at all, Louis. I must admit I'm not quite certain what
were the actual facts concerning *that* purge - *not* "of
the officer corps" but of a certain group of officers connec-
ted with Marshal Tukhachevski. Was he planning a reactionary
coup of some sort, or not? The bits of evidence either way
I've seen point to "yes". If so, that purge of course made
the Soviet Union *stronger* against an invasion - got rid of
a fifth column.
I can understand why a Trotsky adherent like you would say
"the only(!) possible explanation" for such a purge was a
plan to later get into a pact with the Nazis. Even a *possi-
bility* that some military people *might* be planning a bour-
geois-reactionary coup against the socialist government of
the Soviet Union you will not admit there was.
No wonder, since such a coup was precisely what your "mentor"
Trotsky *was* planning, and *engaging in* - behind all his
hypocrisy - at that time. Not the best of propaganda for
Trotskyism, is it. And so you "have to" turn quite openly
bourgeois-stoopid-naive and say "No, no, *unthinkable* that
some military people in the Soviet Union might have been plan-
ning a *coup*; such things happening in a country *we* have
certainly never heard of - let alone might be secretly wanting
and supporting; what a horrid *conspiracy theory* even to
dream of!"
There are some good passages, with certain quotes, on those
dealings of Trotsky's in the mid/late 1930s, in my Belgian
namesake Ludo Martens' book "Another Look at Stalin" - a book
which otherwise needs to be criticized too, since it totally
covers up and denies those not so few quite bad things which
*were* also done by Stalin (etc) at that time. But on the ac-
tivities of that miserable crook Trotsky (and on some other
things), that book by Ludo M. (it can be found on the Net) is
very informative.
Rolf M.
[END OF QUOTE]
4. WHY WAS PROLETARIAN INTERNATIONALISM ABANDONED,
AT LEAST IN PART, BY STALIN?
It's a well-known fact that persons who have become Marxists
still may be influenced to some smaller or larger extent by
bourgeois or even feudal ideology. And in Russia, for in-
stance, where Stalin (a Georgian by birth) lived, there was
a long "tradition" of Great-Russian national chauvinism,
still upheld by not so few among the people. These bad ten-
dencies obviously made a seriously large imprint on the line
of Stalin during a long time.
Even Lenin, whose statements and actions Marxists during a
long time held were more or less 100% correct, did make some
not so small errors in a similar direction as later Stalin.
It was pointed out in some articles in the mid-1980s by the
chairman of the then perhaps still revolutionary (its dege-
neration had already started, though) party in Germany the
KPD/ML(NEUE EINHEIT), Klaus Sender, that Lenin had wrongly
lauded, for instance, a certain Russian emigree writer in the
19th century, Alexander Herzen, as a "consistent democrat",
which he was certainly not. Marx in his time had attacked
that writer as that *quite nasty pan-slavist* which he was.
In this context, a certain *lack of differentiation against
that reactionary pan-slavism*, in the line of Lenin also in
other respects, were found by those then Marxists in Germany
- who however took this as a pretext quite wrongly to aban-
don Marxism-Leninism altogether and who today have turned
into a really nasty bunch of bourgeois crooks. (See their
website at www.neue-einheit.com. Not particularly do they
like me, btw, who earlier learned much from them but in 1990
exposed their turn-around; this can be seen in some articles
under "Miscellaneous" at that site whose ridiculous lies
I've refuted in detail too, in some earlier Infos.)
But as the then "NE" correctly pointed out in 1989 (repro-
duced in English by me in Info #71en):
[QUOTE, "NE", 1989:]
We are not maintaining that Great-Russian chauvinism and other
serious faults, as seen from the standpoint of the workers'
movement, were not there already earlier. There in the Stalin
period was a quite massive Russian chauvinism, which combined
itself with the revolution at that time. There even in Lenin's
line, as we now recently have demonstrated, were political cur-
rents, at least in the culture, which likewise were making com-
mon cause with Russian chauvinism. This for instance shows up
in Lenin's glorification of Alexander Herzen, the Russian pan-
slavist who was scourged by Marx, as a "consistent republican".
In addition to this, the entire Marxism in the Soviet Union is
tainted in a partciular way, made to conform to Russian things,
and this not always necessarily in an internationalist spirit.
To put it briefly, the Russian revolution had its weaknesses.
...
In connection with our discussion of basic questions one com-
rade here has asked, whether the October Revolution then was
the proletarian revolution at all. Concerning this we hold:
what we can say today to the best of our knowledge and con-
science is, that the October Revolution was a Russian-coloured
proletarian revolution. This we would like to stress and make
quite clear.
[END OF QUOTE]
5. HOW ABOUT TROTSKY, AND HIS ROLE IN VARIOUS
POINTS IN TIME?
In my judgement today, approximately this:
Trotsky in the pre-revolution years was in the then Social-
Democratic Party of Russia, as was Lenin. After that party
split, in 1903, between Bolsheviks (who were basically cor-
rect, led by Lenin) and Mensheviks (whose line was opportu-
nist and later turned openly-bourgeois), Trotsky took a
stand somehow "in between" the two, and during more than
a decade, at least, openly and quite nastily vilified Lenin
and his correct, Bolshevik line. After WW I broke out in
1914, for instance, he during a long time was among those
quite many "socialist" leaders in Russia who *supported* the
tsarists' reactionary war, while Lenin and the other Bolshe-
viks were the only ones who, from the start, consistently
opposed it - and who were three years later, in 1917, seen
by the majority of people to be quite right on this.
Shortly before the October revolution in Russia, then, in
September 1917, Trotsky abandoned his earlier standpoint
against the Bolsheviks, led by Lenin, and joined their par-
ty. He then was admitted, more or less immediately, it
seems, into its leading organ, the Central Committee.
In my opinion today, this was a mistake on the part of Lenin
and others. Trotsky was "a good speaker", it was said (ac-
tually, always a typically bourgeois bullshitter, in my
judgement), and "a good organizer" (I cannot tell whether
this was true or not); he certainly at any rate did have a
certain following among the people at that time.
But *such* a thing as that last should *not*, according to
some principles of what has been called precisely "Leninism",
principles which I hold are correct too, be a reason for
letting someone, who during a long time and until recently
pursued a non-proletarian (in many respects, bourgeois)
line, immediately into *the leading organs of* a *proleta-
rian* party.
One could have made an alliance of some sort, of a united-
front type, with such a person as Trotsky, on account of that
obviously considerable following of his. Or he could have
been accepted as "ordinary" Bolshevik party member, for the
time being, making it dependent on what line that former
opponent would pursue during a couple of years whether or
not he should be given some post in the leadership too.
This according to that correct principle for proletarian
parties which has otherwise been advocated precisely by
Marxist-Leninists: Entering into united-front-type *allian-
ces* with bourgeois or petty-bourgeois forces on some points
is OK and sometimes quite necessary; *coalescing* with such
absolutely is *not*.
Now Trotsky clearly, during some years which followed, did do
the proletarian revolution some not inconsiderable services.
But he was always a terrible braggart, for instance, beating
the drum for himself in a way misleading concerning the ac-
tual facts. I remember seeing a book, translated into Swedish
even and published in this country as early as in 1918, in
which Trotsky tried to make people believe that "Lenin and he,
those were the ones who in the main led the Russian revolu-
tion". That writer from the USA, John Reed ("Ten Days That
Shook the World"), was led to believe the same thing.
This was absoluletly not true, of course. It was the (mainly
correct) consistent line of Lenin, advocated and fought for
by him and some others during more than a decade, and during
all that time *opposed by* Trotsky, which had been crucial
in bringing that revolution about.
In the later split between Trotsky and Stalin, there probably
were some faults on Stalin's part (too), but certainly the
main cause of that split were some openly-appearing bourgeois
tendencies on the part of Trotsky, who eventually turned in-
to - was "driven by events", if you wish, into the role of -
that big traitor to socialism as which he since long is known
in Marxist-Leninist circles. The openly-bourgeois medias'
rather loud beating the drums, since long, for *Trotsky* as
"the one representing a revolution betrayed" is no coinci-
dence either, of course.
[Continued in part 2/2]
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